September 9, 2006 - A sharp knife is a safe knife...

Okay, things are definitely not going well right now.  The car is back from paint and parked in my garage but I'm way more behind than ever.  The past Saturday I put a nice slice thru my right index finger using a utility knife while cutting some Dynamat type insulation.

Five stitches later and a bottle of Vicadin, I find myself in a real dilemma now.  How am I going to finish this car w/out being able to use my right hand much?  We'll talk more about this later.  For now, let's take a look at the car.

Doing some color sanding.

That PPG clear polishes out really well.  Looks wet.

You can see the pearl here.  Boy the car is bright in the sun.  8-)

Before I attempted the Gangsta Yakuza move on my finger, I luckily got my front spoiler finished.  Since the RA24/29 front is quite a bit different from the original Coupe Celicas, I had to do quite a bit of cutting and rework to make it fit the stock RA29 lower front fascia.

Plenty of fiberglass and resin on the back side for reinforcement.

Okay, a little more on my finger incident.  As I stated above, I cut myself pretty bad with a utility knife.  Someone once told me that a sharp knife is a safe knife.  I beg to differ.  A sharp knife is a safe knife in the hands of a safe user!  I was really trying to rush and beat the Sept 30 JCCS clock.  Unfortunately in my haste, I made things worse - a lot worse.  I was pretty bummed about the whole thing for a couple of days afterwards.  I never even went back into the garage during those couple of days except to clean up the blood I shed all over the garage floor.

But one morning(third day after Yakuza Day actually) while taking a shower with a plastic bag taped over my finger I kinda came to the realization that I was pretty lucky.  Yeah, my finger hurts, really hurts.  Yeah, my fingernail probably won't grow back all the way - ever.  Yeah, the tip of my finger will be kinda funny shaped for awhile and will take some time to get the feeling back.  But hey, you're one super lucky fool that you still have your finger.  As hard as I was pressing with the knife and as hard it slipped, I'm really lucky I didn't cut my finger completely off.  And working in the IT industry, I need to have all my fingers or I'm toast.  So from that point on, I stopped feeling sorry for myself and just concentrated on getting well and taking good care of my finger.

September 24, 2006 - Taking care of few things.

New Shoreline stickers.

Yeah, it's been awhile since I've updated the Celica project website.  Lot's of things going on.  My finger is doing well.  No more stitches, and I'm now down to a couple of bandaids to keep it covered.  Some of the feeling is starting to come back in the tip now and most of the dead skin has come off, along with the fingernail fragment.  Too much detail?   HAHAHA  Overall though, the finger is doing well and I'm looking forward to the day when I can pick my right nostril again.  Speaking of nostrils...

For most of my life I've had sinus problems but in my later years it's become more of a problem and has been effecting my health a bit.  So after talking with a number of doctors and specialists for the past few months, I decided to have some surgery done on the inside of my nose to open up the airways which in turn, should help me breathe and sleep easier.  Everyone I've talked to that had the same procedure done said it worked extremely well and that they were all glad they did it.  They also all told me it hurt a bit.

I just had the surgery last week.  Okay, it hurt WAAAAAY more than just a bit!  And the recovery is definitely taking longer than I expected.  But not longer than what my Dr. said though so I have nothing to complain about.  The Dr. also prescribed Vicadin for the pain so you know, I really shouldn't complain.  Man, that stuff is good...  :-)

So, between my finger incident and my nose surgery, I haven't gotten a lot done on the Celica and I'm really doubting it's going to make the JCCS show on time.  Kinda a bummers but I'm trying to keep things in perspective too.  I've been waiting a long time to schedule this surgery so I wasn't going to change it because of the show.  My kids are also back in school and also taking tennis classes now which I definitely want to take part in and spend as much time as possible with them on.

So the Celica is back home now and I've been slowly putting it back together.  The front is pretty much done now and I just need to pickup the right size bolts to mount the front bumper to the car.  I've also been polishing some of the remaining chrome and stainless steel parts.

Can you see the reflection of my TL???

New headliner...

Some pix of the front end assembly.

Illegal headlights...

Old school "Banana" taillights.

CF rear hatch from Restored.jp.  You're probably thinking why didn't he take the plastic off!?!?  So I don't jack it up that's why!!!

Okay. that's it for now.  We'll see you all at JCCS regardless if the Celica makes it or not!

Signing off from the comforts of my desk at home...